[Grammar] phonetics

[triannen]

Hello,

I am trying to understand how phonetics alphabet works. I have quite problem about -th sound.
There are two different symbols in the phonetics alphabet depending on the sound you make. For instance differences as in thin/these..

If you know the pronounciation of these words (thin/these) then you can understand which symbols need to use however, if you come across with a word that you have not heard it before how can you understand which symbols of -th you need to use?

I'd really be very happy if you can reply my questions.

Regards,

tria

[Raymott]

Originally Posted by triannen

Hello,

I am trying to understand how phonetics alphabet works. I have quite problem about -th sound.
There are two different symbols in the phonetics alphabet depending on the sound you make. For instance differences as in thin/these..

If you know the pronounciation of these words (thin/these) then you can understand which symbols need to use however, if you come across with a word that you have not heard it before how can you understand which symbols of -th you need to use?

I'd really be very happy if you can reply my questions.

Regards,

tria

Generally you can't know without looking in a dictionary - which will tell you whether to use theta or eth.
However, the common function words - the, that, this, these, those, them, they - all use the voiced eth.

[BobK]

Originally Posted by Raymott

Generally you can't know without looking in a dictionary - which will tell you whether to use theta or eth.
However, the common function words - the, that, this, these, those, them, they - all use the voiced eth.

... And just to fill out that rule of thumb, the spelling 'th' at the beginning of a word is usually (always?) [θ] for nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs. For example, if you see a sentence like 'This is a thumbscrew' you can read the last word accurately even if you don't know what it means; the first phoneme is /θ/ because whatever it is it's obviously a noun.

b

PS And - less interestingly for ELT students - a native speaker, given a nonsense 'word' in such a context, would unthinkingly use the unvoiced sound: 'This is a thriddlypump' - /θ/